India’s first ever mainstream gay film festival
April 27th, 2010 by Chloe.Setter
The first ever mainstream gay film festival is being held in India this week.
The four-day ‘Kashish’ Mumbai International Queer Film Festival 2010 runs from the 22-25 April, showing 110 films from 25 different countries.
It is being hailed as a landmark in the history of the country, which only lifted a ban on homosexual acts, in place since 1860, under a year ago.
Organiser Vivek Raj Anand told AFP: “There have been gay film festivals before… but this is the first gay film festival in the mainstream. We’ve got partners to work with us and we found that it wasn’t so difficult.”
Festival films are being shown at one of the country’s leading multiplex cinema chains, PVR Cinemas, which said its decision to support the festival was based on its support for “good cinema”.
Among the films being shown is I Am – a story that follows the lives of four people, including a gay man who lives in fear of blackmail over his sexuality.
It is directed by Onir, who made the acclaimed 2005 title My Brother… Nikhil, about the stigma surrounding homosexuality in India in the 1990s.
comments